


The Way Out of the Crowd of Ghosts

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, possibly pre-OT6, the possibilities are supposed to remain open at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 06:22:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20271373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "So something happens, and this results in seeing different universes- different outcomes of different choices. It starts off rather silly but quickly gets rather depressing for our Universe A because of all the various ways things became twisted along the way in every other Universe. And then worse, ones that are so, so much better than Universe A.As creative as you can be with this."The Guardians begin to see ghosts of other possible paths surrounding themselves. They find a way to to get the bad possibilities to fade, but the happier possibilities prove a more difficult problem.





	The Way Out of the Crowd of Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/26/2016.

Reflections, shadows, possibilities. All the Guardians could see them, though they had yet to figure out how or why this ability had been granted them. The Man in the Moon hadn’t been able to provide any answers. Nothing made the visions go away, and for now, there seemed to be nothing to be done save for the Guardians to get used to the multitude of ghostlike figures that swarmed around them.  
  
When it was discovered that no one could interact with their alternate selves, North asserted that they should all just ignore them. It was impossible to say who or what their shadows were interacting with, and so their actions or reactions shouldn’t mean anything.  
  
And if all that had been true, North’s advice probably would have been sound. However, over time, the shadows developed. The blurring of the figures lessened, and the number of figures surrounding each person shrank. It was as if the minor changes were being subsumed into larger alternate paths. As this happened, it became possible to see, if one concentrated on one particular figure, the surroundings and companions of that figure in that particular potentiality.   
  
Sometimes, when the ghosts were in a highly emotional state, it was possible to hear them, too.  
  
“North said to ignore the ghosts,” Bunny said to Jack, one day. “But I can’t. I know what I’ve seen, and I can guess some of the things you’ve seen. There are a lot of worlds out there where we never made up, or where I’m cruel to you, or even where I hit you on Easter.” He frowned. “I know I’m hot-headed. I know how my arm started to move. But with all the possibilities crowding around us, now, I feel like I need to tell you that I’m so glad I never finished that movement. I’m glad we’re getting along. And I’m not seriously mad about the Blizzard of ’68 anymore, either.”  
  
“Thanks, Bunny,” Jack said. “It…it really does mean a lot to me for you to tell me that. But…I have to say, I think that in this world I’ve faced anything you’ve thrown at me with a little more resilience than I’ve seen some of my ghosts showing.”  
  
Bunny chuckled. “Yeah, all right, that’s true. But you still shouldn’t need so much resilience to deal with me.”  
  
This conversation proved to be not just an important one for Bunny and Jack, but for the rest of the Guardians as well. Without intending to, Bunny and Jack had found a key to getting rid of some of the ghosts. After speaking with each other, the versions of himself that were cruel to Jack disappeared from Bunny’s sight, while Jack no longer saw images of himself as tearful and timid around Bunny.  
  
Bunny did tease North for his solution being the exact thing that wouldn’t work, but North was glad enough of a reason to speak to Jack and explain that he never wanted to be his controlling father, that he regretted keeping Jack out of the Workshop for all those years.  
  
Other conversations were had as well. Tooth spoke of what it would have been like to truly lose all her fairies. All of the Guardians spoke to each other and Sandy about what it had been like, with him dead, and what it would have been like if he hadn’t come back, or hadn’t come back as himself. And over many weeks they all slowly worked through the strange proliferation of paths in which Jack had joined Pitch.   
  
For a time, the ghosts around them all were fewer. The ones that remained were only those from weaker, fainter paths, in which they couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on to talk about it.  
  
Sandy noticed first that they hadn’t actually solved the problem at all. In the early days of the ghosts, he had always had the fewest, as he had been dead and gone in so many of the possibilities shown. But now, after the Guardians had worked their way through their feelings and reactions to so many distressing possibilities, now that they all knew each other so much better, now that they were spending more time together and getting along better—well, now the ghosts of other possibilities started to cluster around them again. This time, Sandy was inundated with them. It appeared that addressing the possibilities they had been able to see before hadn’t made the slightest dent in the overall number of possible paths for them.   
  
“What are we going to do?” Tooth asked when they all gathered together. “I was so glad to have some real space around myself, again, and now it’s just as bad as before. And I’ve noticed that a lot of these other paths now don’t seem too bad. I seem to be very happy in many of them, actually. Have you noticed that—for yourselves, I mean?”  
  
The others nodded, with Jack seeming particularly embarrassed as he did so.  
  
“So what are we supposed to do?” Tooth folded her arms. “Are we supposed to pick what seems like the best one and work towards it? That won’t work if we don’t all pick the same one, and there’s so many, and they’re so hard to tell apart. Are we supposed to figure out what’s happening in all of them, and try to work towards whatever _everything_ those other versions have gotten right? We can’t do that. For one thing, there is more than one way to be happy, and for another, many of these visions are contradictory.”  
  
“Perhaps we simply have to talk about what we see, as before,” North said.  
  
Bunny looked skeptical. “Maybe. But if it did us good to talk about how bad things could have been—well, with those possibilities, we ended up realizing that the foundations of those situations didn’t exist, or didn’t exist in the degree that would have allowed them to come to pass. If we start talking about these better paths, I don’t think it’ll be good for any of us to face so much that’s wonderful, but impossible for us to attain.”  
  
_Maybe it’s not like that at all._ Sandy frowned thoughtfully, in the midst of all his ghosts. Most of them were sending out dreams. A few appeared to be meeting with the other Guardians, based on what they were signing. _I think that by talking about the negative paths, we actually eliminated them. Remember that there were some we couldn’t make go away? We all still have faults. They could still lead to something terrible, even if that’s less likely now._  
  
“So if we _do_ see something in the visions that we want,” Jack said, “we should talk about it, and see if it’s possible?”  
  
“I don’t see any reason not to try that,” Tooth said. “The possibility would then be eliminated or the world of the vision would merge with our own. Either way, more space would be cleared. But how are we to ever be free?”  
  
Sandy rested his fist in front of his mouth and narrowed his eyes. _Dreams often help a sleeper work through difficult problems in their waking life, even though the world of the dream doesn’t usually resemble the real world at all. What if all these ghosts and visions are the dreams our world is having? What if there is one big problem, one major factor out of balance, that our world is trying to right, but it just doesn’t know how?_  
  
“If there is a major factor out of balance,” North said carefully, “then in all of these happier possibilities, it would be _in_ balance. So we must watch, and look for what is common between all these paths.”  
  
“Well, I know I can’t help but pay attention to them,” Bunny said. “Next we meet, we’ll see what we’ve all seen.”  
  


* * *

  
  
_Since no one’s saying anything and everyone’s staring at me, I can only assume you’ve all come to the same conclusion,_ Sandy signed, a month later. _We need to talk to Pitch. At the very least._  
  
Some of the tension eased out of everyone else’s postures.   
  
“Yeah, but it might be the very least, at that,” Bunny said. “What if…more is required? I don’t know about what everyone else saw, but, uh, in my case….”  
  
“I’m sure we all saw exactly the same things,” Tooth said quickly. “There’s no need to go into detail.”  
  
North nodded. “As Tooth said before, there are many contradictory paths.”  
  
“Except for one,” Jack pointed out, then covered his hand with his mouth and turned bright red.  
  
_There’s no need to be embarrassed, it would have been stranger not to notice that particular possibility._ Sandy smiled kindly at Jack, then turned to the others. _And for all of us, we can’t let embarrassment get the better of us. We can’t let the thought of any particular possibility make us squeamish about doing what we have to do. And we have to talk to Pitch._  
  
“Do you think he’s been having the same kinds of visions?” Jack asked.  
  
Sandy inadequately hid his grin at everyone’s expressions behind one small hand. _If that’s how you’re going to be, I suppose no one will object if I volunteer to go find him?_  
  
“No, I’ll come with you,” Jack said. He shook his head. “No matter how it turns out…I think I should be there. I think I have been there.”  
  
“Be careful,” Tooth said, and North nodded.  
  
“Really careful,” said Bunny. He sighed. “Good luck, too. I really do want this to turn out for the best.” He shook his head and made a face. “No matter what that best might be.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> sylphidine reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
Ooooh, this hits ALL my buttons. Forever exploring those differences in decisions and the paths where they lead.


End file.
